A group of motherboard enthusiasts working for GIGABYTE, sharing their insider knowledge and general ramblings of the motherboard business, the tech industry, latest technologies and trends, and other random odds and ends.

Friday, July 29, 2011

DazMode could easily be described as a veteran PC water-cooling evangelist. What this man doesn’t know about high performance water cooled rigs, simply ain’t worth knowing. Having come close to completing his Orange Build project which was based around our X58A-OC board, we thought it would be cool to see what Daz would do with our GIGABYTE G1.Sniper board. Check out the first video of many:

Thursday, July 28, 2011

Elric Phares, prolific video reviewer on motherboards.org, also known as Doc Overclock, has gotten his hands on our Z68XP-UD3-iSSD board, the first ever board to be fitted out and bundled with an mSATA SSD. Inside the Z68XP-UD3-iSSD retail package you will of course find the motherboard itself, but look closer and you’ll also see that the central area of the board has what looks like a mini PCI-Express slot replete with some sort of mini PCIe module. In fact this is the Larson Creek Intel mSATA SDD which contains 20GB of SLC memory - which, as Elric points out, lasts longer and offers faster performance than the regular MLC memory you’ll generally find on an SSD drive.

To get you in the mood, here’s the Z68XP-UD3H-iSSD board being unboxed and examined inch by inch by the Doc.

Here is the full board review with benchmarks and conclusions. btw..listen to the Thrash metal in the background…dude that’s Elric’s band!

The Z68XP-UD3-iSSD was designed specifically with the Z68 chipset and Intel Smart Response technology in mind. The onboard SSD acts as a fast caching drive that significantly speeds up your most commonly used applications, boosting your PCs overall responsiveness and feel.

Cheers Elric! As enthusiastic and knowledgeable as ever. Always a pleasure. And we dig the headbangin’ tunes during the benchies! Rock On!

Wednesday, July 27, 2011

Proverbial what?… you might well ask. From what I can discern, Vito Cassisi is probably referring to the proverbial s*%t off a shovel…a well worn piece of Aussie urban slang that implies the ultimate in speed, or very, very fast! And the GIGABYTE X58A-OC is exactly that – built for speed!

With our goop-laced 990X strapped in, we aimed to topple our previous 4.8GHz achievement. Naturally, we dived straight into 4.8GHz, and tweaked our voltages to get it Prime95 stable at 1.487v (1.475v idle, 1.502v load). QPI voltage was set to 1.275v to achieve this, with level 2 LLC. Being an overclocker’s board, we pushed as far as we could manage. We finally broke 4.9GHz stable at a sizable 1.55v vCore without touching the QPI voltage. Nice!

We’re glad this board has a very specific market in mind, because it makes it much easier to recommend. If you’re looking at getting your best shot at breaking some records, then you simply cannot look past this board. We’re hearing that this will retail at around $400, so while it’s not cheap, it’s a fair price to pay for what is essentially the board for overclocking on the X58 platform. Now, to source some LN2...

As the younger brother of the G1.Assassin and G1.Sniper, the G1.Guerilla is perhaps an occasionally overlooked member of our GIGABYTE G1-Killer motherboard series. Still, when your packing support for triple SLI and Crossfire X configurations, a dedicated Bigfoot Networking chip and HD audio features like Creative’s X-Fi Xtreme Fidelity, you’re surely no slouch, even compared to your high-end brothers - which is exactly the conclusion that reviewer SXRguyinMA from TheBestCaseScenario.com came to, when he award the G1.Guerrilla a Perfect Ten Award!

The Gigabyte G1.Guerrilla motherboard combines speed, monitoring, power saving and customization features into one easy-to-use and good-looking platform. Being the lowest model of the G1.Killer series, It's not as expensive or feature-packed as the high-end G1.Killer boards like the Sniper and Assassin, but don't let it fool you. The G1.Guerrilla performed well in our benchmarking tests and overclocks easily from the BIOS or with the EasyTune6TM utility. It's got support for 3-Way Crossfire AND 3-Way SLI, and with both USB 3.0 and SATA 6 GB/S this board is pretty well future-proofed for the time being.

The Editor-in-Chief for TheBestCaseScenario.com also felt compelled to chime in with his own Editors Choice award!

Editors Note: After seeing several of these boards in person and talking to Will in detail about the G1. Guerrilla I am awarding it with my Editors Choice Award. If you are looking for extreme 1366 performance at a very reasonable price, the Gigabyte G1. Guerrilla cant be beat!

Tuesday, July 26, 2011

Here’s an interesting, if unusual, video from Futurelooks.com. Shot during the LANcouver gaming event last weekend, Steven challenges a bunch of Canadian hardcore gamers to sit straight with their backs up against wall, legs at a 45 degree angle - the eventual winner gets a coveted GIGABYTE G1.Assassin board. Sounds easy? Hell no!…Looking at these pictures, it might just be the most painful way to win a motherboard yet devised by man, but as you’ll see, it’s all good fun. Check out the video below.

US overclocker chew* is having a play with the Gigabyte Llano board (A75-UD4H I believe). He did some quick testing just for fun with only 755Mhz core on IGP and set a whopping 7K in 3DMARK Vantage Performance. These little APUs pack some serious 3D power to be able to score 7K without any crazy overclocks.

Follow all the action in Brian’s thread on XS, no doubt he will squeeze more out of it, he is an overclocker afterall heheh.

It’s been a year since we last wrote about some crazy memory overclocking from the French OCers marmott and Benji Tshi. They just put up a new thread with some crazy clocks, particularly CAS6 frequency on the good old GIGABYTE P55-UD6.

Monday, July 25, 2011

Our top of the line AMD 900 series board continues to garner plaudits, with reviewer Zardon from Kit Guru awarding the 990FXA-UD7 their ‘Must Have’ award.

The Gigabyte 990FXa-UD7 is fully loaded, offering support for DDR3 memory up to 2000mhz and 2,3 and 4 way AMD CrossfireX and Nvidia SLI configurations. The board also includes support for SATA 6GB/s, IEEE 1394a and USB 3.0 devices

As we expected from Gigabyte, the build quality of the 990FXA-UD7 is top drawer and the board itself is one of the most attractive designs we have seen in recent years. There are no performance related concerns and overclocking is very straightforward, reaching the maximum air cooled limits of our Black Edition processors.

Gigabyte certainly haven’t cut any corners, making this one of the finest boards on the market for AMD performance oriented users. With six PCI E slots for four way multi GPU configurations, as well as native SATA 6 Gbps, USB 3.0 and eSATA ports, the vast array of connectivity will appease a wide cross section of the enthusiast userbase. The ‘PC off’ option to charge USB devices is also handy, even if it isn’t exclusive to this particular product.

Friday, July 22, 2011

The moment you’ve all been waiting for has finally arrived! Yes that’s right - the lucky winners of our Super4 competition have just been announced! We gave away three of our most sought after motherboards as prizes; a G1.Assassin, a Z68X-UD7 and an X58-OC motherboard. These attractive boards will now go to Vikas Saini (India), Elena Putri (Malaysia) and Ryan (US) respectively. Congrats!

Thanks to all of you who took part in our first Facebook hosted competition, and again congratulations to the winners. Your motherboards should be with you soon!

Let me sign off by saying that we plan to do many more competitions in the near future, so make sure you sign up to our GIGABYTE Motherboard Facebook page and keep updated. and don’t forget to Like us!

This is quite an impressive feat and I have a feeling we will be seeing some more world records fall to him as he has also been able to take his CPU up to 4.906GHz on LN2 which is also a record as of 7/21 http://hwbot.org/hardware/processor/a8_3850.

Each year Maximum PC set out to the build the ultimate PC, one that will send gamers, geeks and DIY builders in paroxysms of joy and envy. They call it the Dream Machine. This year’s build is particularly noteworthy from our perspective in that it’s based around our GA-Z68X-UD7 board. With a water cooled and overclocked Intel i7 2600K pushed to 4.8GHz, three GTX 580 cards in a tri-SLI configuration, 16GB of RAM, 2x Vertex3 SSDs in a RAID 0 array with 9TBs of storage – yeah, you can see why the call it the Dream Machine. It also makes sense that they’d also opt for our top tier Sandy Bridge board:

The board itself has everything we need….a crap load of SATA connectors, USB 3.0 internal headers; and not just SLI and CrossFire X, but also tri-SLI. To run (tri-) SLI, we needed a motherboard that features Nvidia’s nForce 200 chip. The GA-Z68-UD7-B3 has that and is also chock full of cool features such as the ability to charge your phone via USB while your PC is off.

Pick up the latest edition of Maximum PC for a complete run down of the Dream Machine 2011.

Wednesday, July 20, 2011

Taiwan’s leading ‘Computer DIY’ review magazine has given our A75-UD4H motherboard a thorough inspection looking at all aspects of the board including performance presentation and features.

These local reviewers – well, yes we do live in Taipei so these guys are about as local as it gets for us – were particularly impressed with just how much we managed to squeeze on to the board in terms of features!

Gigabyte GA-A75-UD4H. This design retains the old blue and white color, power VRM module is designed to supply 10 (8 +2) power supply. Support DDR3-1866 Overclocking Memory, there are two PCI-E 2.0 x16 slots, in addition to three PCI-E x1 and two PCI slots. I/O design is fairly rich, with two USB 2.0 ports, four USB 3.0 ports, eSATA, D-Sub, DVI, HDMI, and DP (Display port) ports and so on. In addition, the board also provides two front-panel USB 3.0 expansion ports. SATA support RAID 0,1,10, JBOD, and two VIA VT6308 chipset provides the IEEE 1394 port (a group of I / O backplane, a group for the expansion of cable). A seriously full featured motherboard!

Tuesday, July 19, 2011

John Gillooly at PC Authority has spent some time getting to know our Z68X-UD3H board, and by extension the new Intel Z68 platform. By all accounts he seems impressed with both, giving the board an overwhelming thumbs up.

“The Z68X-UD3H-B3 is Gigabyte’s highest end Z68 that supports integrated graphics, and as such has a pretty impressive list of features. On the I/O backplane sit D-Sub, DVI, HDMI and Displayport outputs for the processor graphics. There are two USB 3 and five USB 2 ports (one is a hybrid eSATA one). There are also single PS/2, Gigabit Ethernet and FireWire ports, and the usual array of audio outputs (including optical). The board itself supports seven SATA drives (only two ports are SATA 6Gbps however), front panel USB 3 as well as multiple USB 2 front panel connectors, and both SLI and CrossfireX via the two x16 PCI-Express slots. The area around the CPU socket is remarkably sparse, thanks to a move to space-saving ‘Driver MOSFETS’ for power regulation.”

“We do have to applaud Gigabyte for aggressively moving its products to the Z68, because we can’t help but feel that this is the chipset Intel should have released for Sandy Bridge. It puts to rest some of our concerns over being unable to use Quicksync with discrete graphics, while also bringing with it features that should have turned up the first time around.”

Monday, July 18, 2011

Seth Colaner, writing for CPU Magazine (Computer Power User), has reviewed our flagship AMD 900 series motherboard, the 990FXA-UD7. Detailing a comprehensive spec sheet that includes 8 SATA 3.0 (6Gbps) ports, four USB 3.0 ports and both 4-way SLI and Crossfire X support for the first time on an AMD platform, Seth concludes that overall, the board is a winner!

“ Overall, this board is a winner. It’s geared for all manner of storage needs and equipped to support plenty of graphic firepower. It features all the amenities you’d want in a performer, including the later AMD chipset and support for upcoming chips, making the 990FXA-UD7 a great base on which to build a powerful AMD system.”

Friday, July 15, 2011

Writing for original PC Hardware review pioneers, Tom’s Hardware, the aptly named Thomas Soderstrom has put all his powers of adjudication to the test with a comprehensive comparison of some of the more affordable Intel Z68 motherboards on the market. Testing products from MSI, ASRock, Biostar, Intel and Gigabyte, we’re honored to report that Thomas eventually gave the final nod of approval to our Z68XP-UD3 board. Here’s a sample of what Thomas had to say about it:

“The Z68XP-UD3 firmly targets performance fanatics with a layout that eschews the use of integrated graphics as a primary output, instead favoring SLI and CrossFire.”

“Up against the limits of our intended budget, the Z68XP-UD3 is one of only two motherboards in today’s roundup to include a front-panel USB 3.0 header. The entirety of features would have made this a $160 board even if it had used the P67 chipset, so we’re not entirely clear how Gigabyte managed to retain this price with a Z68 product that includes Lucidlogix's Virtu license.”

Thursday, July 14, 2011

Great news for H61/P61 users wanting to use TouchBIOS on their systems. In addition to the Z68 series, GIGABYTE has just updated several H61/P61 boards with the latest BIOS that will now enable support for our new icon-based BIOS. All you have to do is update to the latest BIOS listed and install the TouchBIOS application, both of which you can do by visiting the GIGABYTE website. Stay tuned in the next coming week or two, as GIGABYTE will also enable TouchBIOS on our AMD A75 and 900 series motherboards.

Yesterday’s DigiTimes had an interesting story showing that the desktop market is expected to grow 8% from last year, due in part from the rise in tablet PCs. While this may seem counterintuitive, people buying tablets still need to connect and sync to desktop PCs (as Tim has pointed out in his past post). Also, it doesn’t hurt that GIGABYTE motherboards with On/Off Charge are able to charge tablets through their USB ports, unlike a majority of notebooks out there.

The desktop PC market, benefiting from the rise of tablet PCs, is expected to achieve a growth of 8% on year in terms of shipments in 2011 with motherboard players including Gigabyte Technology, Micro-Star International (MSI), Asustek Computer, and ASRock all set to advance into China's tier-4 to -6 cities

They also mentioned that if Europe remains stable through the rest of the year, motherboard makers should reach growth up to 15% in the 3rd quarter.

The sources estimated that if China's demand during the peak season reaches their expectations, while demand from Europe market remains stable, first-tier motherboard makers' sequential shipment growth will reach 15% in the third quarter. Europe is currently still filled with uncertainty, whether demand from Europe will drop even further as well as the potential of China's tier-4 and -6 cities will both be keys for the motherboard makers' performance in the third quarter.

It is now pretty much common knowledge that we will be announcing its sequel in the next few weeks, but the fact remains that the original X58 based GIGABYTE G1.Sniper board is still very much hot property to any hardcore core gamer who has invested in a high-end Intel i7 Gulftown processor. It is for this reason that reviewer Preston Yuen at APH Networks has spent a good deal of time getting to know our G1.Sniper motherboard on a very intimate level. Here’s an example of what Preston had to say. Regarding the packaging and design:

Here is a box that I thought was quite unique and different from most motherboard packaging I have seen so far. Of course, consistent with its name, Gigabyte incorporated a military grade enclosure in the background as part of the design, with some battlefield scars and other graphics around the box. Emphasizing on this military theme, our motherboard's name is printed boldly in an army font across the center. It is then placed under Gigabyte's G1-Killer Gaming Motherboard series branding, and stamped with a very distinct skull logo at the bottom right corner.

G1.Sniper’s key features:

Taking a close look around the LGA 1366 socket area, we are able to identify the usual array of components related to the CPU voltage regulator circuit, including a decent array of chokes and a couple of gun rail inspired heatsinks on the L-shaped heatpipe.One thing to note here is that the G1.Sniper is one of the rare boards that feature a dedicated LAN processing chip. Not only does it have a BigFoot Killer E2100 NPU, Gigabyte also installed Creative's high end CA20K2-2AG HF X-Fi APU/DSP as part of the motherboard -- with real X-RAM, too. We will cover that in detail in just a moment.

In conclusion:

What I am trying to say is, if you already own a high end computer, and all you are missing is a motherboard, you have nothing to fear -- because what the G1.Sniper is a truly amazing product worthy of its name. As a new motherboard that supports the (slightly) older Intel X58 chipset, the G1.Sniper is not only an unquestionable high end unit -- it also has some amazing dedicated Creative X-Fi based audio hardware under the hood. In fact, it is so good, it will probably save you at least $150 on a dedicated sound card, along with some additional space on your motherboard. If top of the line audio still doesn't convince you, it also has a dedicated BigFoot NPU, which let's just say, it is not a necessity, but definitely a "sure, why not" kind of thing. In addition to the well designed and clean layout, the Gigabyte G1.Sniper also looks incredible in any windowed chassis.

Preston has really gone in to some quite incredible depth (12 long pages!) in his review, so make you take time to read the full version here.

The more sharp-eyed among you may have noticed our official AMD A75 microsite that we recently added to the GIGABYTE site. This microsite highlights the latest AMD A75 GIGABYTE motherboard series, details specific motherboard SKUs along side detailed specifications and also features information about the excellent onboard DX11 graphics and Dual Graphics capabilities of the all new AMD Llano APUs.

You can also learn about GIGABYTE specific advanced features, including On/Off Charge, port-by-port USB overload protection, DualBIOS 3TB + And don’t forget of course that you can use GIGABYTE’s acclaimed EasyTune 6 technology to tweak your AMD APU, memory and GPU to squeeze every once of performance from these Llano processors. Our resident overclocker managed a remarkable 6000 points in 3DMark Vantage Performance on air using high performance memory DIMMs!

And don’t forget that in 2011, we talking about our GIGABYTE Super4 concept. Super 4 basically means that no matter which A75 motherboard model you select, you’ll still be able to enjoy the best quality features that will ensure you’re guaranteed a solid and stable PC build. GIGABYTE Ultra Durable 3 technology, plus 3X USB power, On / Off Charging, Low RDS (on) MOSFETs and advanced Blu-ray optimized 108dB audio quality are just some of the features that we’ve tied together ensuring Super Safe, Super Speed, Super Savings and Super Sound features are built into all models, including the most affordable ones.

Tuesday, July 12, 2011

Well-known Taiwanese reviewers at XtremeSystems have tested our Gigabyte A75M-UD2H motherboard and the AMD Llano A8-3800 APU. As well as looking at the A75M-UD2H board itself and its packaging, they also looked at how the A8-3800 APU and the A75M-UD2H teamed up in terms of basic performance and overclocking tests.

Interestingly, they also took the time to compare the new Llano A8-3850 APU with previous generation AMD architectures. They took AMD Athlon II X4 645 and Phenom II X4 970BE CPUs (both clocked at the same 2.9GHz), pairing them both with an AMD 6450 HD discrete card.

In terms of the actual CPU performance parts, the Llano APU just about wins in all the test against the Athlon II, but the gap is not too much, winning by a maximum 20% in CPUmark99. The Phenom II fairs marginally better, beating the Llano in some CPU tests. In terms of display performance however, the integrated Lynx GPU wipes the floor with the HD6450 discrete card on all benchmarks.

This is a really great demonstration of how AMD’s new Llano platform is offering a really compelling upgrade option for AMD users and DIY builders looking for a solid graphics and processing performance.

It would appear that Czech hardware site PCtuning have apparently been lucky enough to get their hands an early AMD FX CPU sample, giving us a glimpse of the performance we can expect from AMD’s forthcoming enthusiast CPU line. In his latest article we see that Mr. Z.Obermaier is comparing his AMD FX chip with Intel’s top tier Core i7 990X part. While it’s certainly interesting to see that the new Bulldozer processors are managing to keep pace with their Gulftown counterparts, it’s also quite flattering for us here at Gigabyte to note that the reviewer is using our motherboards for both platforms.

The AMD FX chip is apparently being benched using our recently launched 990FXA-UD7 motherboard. It’s the most full featured AMD board we’ve ever done and the first to be able to harness both AMD and Nvidia multi-GPU setups. In the above image you’re looking at the UD7 in an SLI configuration. The Intel 990X CPU was put through its paces on our champion overclocking board, the GIGABYTE X58A-OC.

While these benchmarks are pretty far from conclusive, they are at least indicators that we may see the extreme performance space heat up in the next few months as AMD launch its FX line. It’s also fair to say that, as 3D gaming applications, these benchmarks are perhaps no 100% CPU-oriented, so even if these results are true, they probably do not represent the raw grunt of the two processors. It does however, at least indicate that in terms of multi-GPU configurations, DIY builders have more choices than ever.

Shane Baxtor over on TweakTown.com just finished up his review of our A75-UD4H motherboard. Shane was impressed with the board, not least because he managed a nice healthy overclock on his AMD A8-3850 APU, hitting 3.7GHz from a stock 2.9GHz. Here’s a sample of what Shane had to say:

For the GIGABYTE A75-UD4H we'll be testing our A8-3850 both at stock and overclocked form, so before we get into the benchmark side of things let's first see what's going on with the overclock on offer. For weeks now GIGABYTE have been releasing details on their motherboards and overclocking results with the A8-3850. Prior to launch they had managed to break IGP records that focused on the onboard graphics side of things. With so much talk about overclocking on the GIGABYTE prior to the launch, I had high hopes for the platform when it came to overclocking and looking below, you can see it didn't disappoint.

Pushing our A8-3850 to just over 3.7GHz is no easy task, but no doubt GIGABYTE have done a good job in the BIOS and the board itself to make sure the overclocking potential is present. We ended up with our bus speed at 131MHz and we managed to leave the multiplier at the stock x29.

Shane also notes that the addition of a Dual-Link DVI port supporting resolutions of up to 2560 x 1600 pixels also makes the A75-UD4H a more attractive platform for folks with 30” monitors.

Feature wise the A75-UD4H offers us everything we want, but one of the more stand out features on it would have to be the fact that GIGABYTE have opted for a Dual-Link DVI connector on the back of their board. For a lot of people this might not be a huge issue, but what I like about it is the fact that you could use a 30" monitor with the system and not have a need for an extra video card.

While gaming at 2560 x 1600 is going to be out of the question, the fact that you could build a small, low powered system that doesn't have the need for another separate video card is impressive. From a productive perspective this is great as you can have a high resolution desktop which gives you plenty of room and build a system that's not only inexpensive, but inexpensive to run due to the fact its power draw is so low.

Monday, July 11, 2011

Digitimes reports that Tablet PC shipments are expected to almost double from 14 million in Q2, to 22 million in Q3. The vast majority (14-15 million or 70%) will be iPads, while the rest will come from Amazon, HTC, Samsung, HP, Dell, etc…

You may be asking why a desktop motherboard marketing person is blogging about tablets? It’s not so strange when you consider that tablets are not entirely stand alone devices in that they need to be enabled and synced with a computer from time to time. The iPad is an excellent example of this where you need to set up an iTunes account that will enable your iPad before you use it, and you use the same setup to add/remove documents on your iPad. So essentially, content is created, stored and shared from a PC, and it is consumed on tablets.

Now if you consider the advantages of a desktop PC, it has more processing power for creating video and other content, it has more storage options for adding terabytes of storage space for high-def video (and backups), and it charges your tablet PC while you sync (share) your content. So the desktop PC is a better match for tablets than a notebook! Not to mention the inherent competition between tablets and notebooks/netbooks seeing as they’re all thin, light, have long battery life and help you stay connected on the go… Well, actually tablets do all that better than notebooks don’t they? No wonder we’re excited about tablets!

That may be why Canalys and other industry analysts are expecting over 10% growth in the PC market in 2011. Have a look at this news post:

And here’s the plug: GIGABYTE motherboards come with 3x USB Power that can provide similar recharging speeds as power socket charging, and On/Off Charge that makes it possible to quick charge iPads whether it is on or off. So we’re innovating for tablets on our motherboards.

PC DIY forum legend, Lsdmeasap, has been playing around with his GIGABYTE X58A-OC mobo to see what OC world records are still available for it. Last week he found that he was 3rd overall in the base clock (Bclk) standings, so this weekend he brought on the chill with some dry ice cooling and took first place with a comfortable margin!

Friday, July 8, 2011

In recent weeks we’ve been really excited to see the discrete-class performance of AMD’s new A-Series APUs, where a multi-core CPU and a full DirectX11 GPU basically sit side by side on one piece of silicon. This means that users can get fairly solid 3D gaming performance out of their rig using the onboard graphics alone.

Like all of today’s graphics processors, the Lynx GPUs that reside on these Llano APUs are also reliant on the memory sub-system to reach decent performance levels in today’s 3D games. This is because modern GPUs use parallel processing to churn through large data sets on-the-fly, using accelerated pixel and vertex shaders to make these realistic 3D environments come to life. Memory bandwidth, or basically the speed of your RAM, is therefore a crucial factor in getting this data to and from the GPU.

The upshot of all this is that if you use high-performance memory with your A-Series APU, the onboard Lynx GPU will have more bandwidth to play with, resulting in faster frame rates and smoother game-play in modern 3D games.

To give you a clearer idea about just how much extra performance you can expect see by using high-performance RAM, we’ve done some benchmarking and testing which we will share with you here.

Raising the Memory Clock

We took AMD’s A8350 APU, our GIGABYTE A75-UD4H board and tried a variety of differently clocked memory modules. We wanted to see exactly what effect raising the memory clock had on DX11 3D gaming performance. For this we used a variety of Corsair RAM modules; DDR3 1333, 1600, 1866, 2000 and 2400.

And just to make interesting, we also benchmarked the DDR 2400 rig with HiCookie’s overclocked GPU settings – to take a glimpse of the outer limit of A-Series APU performance.

Here are the test configurations we used.

Here are the benchmarks of four DirectX 11 titles that we enjoy playing; Dirt 3, Dragon Age II, Metro 2033 and Civilization V.

As you can see, you can expect to enjoy a decent performance boost with each successive memory clock increase. Civilization V stands out an example of how even relatively affordable DDR 1600 RAM can be used to effect a FPS change of huge significance – moving from 28 FPS to a much smoother 47 FPS. In short, APU users who invest in high-performance memory will be getting more performance out of their AMD APU – in 3 out of 4 cases we explored, that performance boost was pretty much incremental.

Overclocking Does Make a Difference

A few reviewers in the last week or so have concluded that AMD’s Llano APUs are entirely bandwidth constrained, and that overclocking the APU is more or less a waste of time. We attempted to explore that idea by getting our resident overclocker HiCookie to try and push the Lynx GPU on a higher RAM clock. The results here speak for themselves. Using our A75-UD3H board with HiCookie’s overclocked GPU settings, you’re entering another performance bracket entirely, with often double the frame rates of stock settings. If you’re going to use DDR 2400 RAM, there‘s clearly GPU headroom worth exploiting.

A Word to the Wise

So if you’re thinking of building a AMD A-Series rig anytime soon, bear in mind that the RAM you choose will have an effect on gaming performance. High performance RAM will allow you to get more out of the onboard Lynx GPU. But hey, don’t forget that you’ll probably have to configure the memory timings in BIOS according to the manufacturers recommendations (usually printed on the DIMM itself). SPD alone won’t get you there!

Thursday, July 7, 2011

Australian print magazine PC Power Play recently published a review of our GIGABYTE X58-OC motherboard, the world’s first high-end motherboard designed specifically for hardcore overclockers. Reviewer Matt Wilson had this to say about the built-in overclocking features and the how the boards target market will appreciate the overclocking potential that lies within:

After warm up runs, we gave the OC-Touch feature a work through, upping the BLCK frequency a good chunk and managing to score a healthy 4.73 GHz overclock (225x21)….The reason this board can overclock further (on air) than other boards we have had in the past is due to voltage stability. Instead of pumping through higher voltages to iron out any ripples, this power delivery system manages to deliver clean power to the CPU, therefore lowering the overall voltage required. We aren’t talking insane levels here, but you’d be surprised how much extra heat 0.06v can produce when you are already pushing 85C on an air cooler.

..for that 1% of hardcore overclockers, this board is definitely the best choice you’ve got. Make the decision: genuine gaming comfort, or simple overclocking insanity?

As a print magazine, of course we’re unable to supply a URl. However Australians can no doubt grab a copy at their local newsagent.

Wednesday, July 6, 2011

We’ve just uploaded some new images of the our forthcoming GIGABYTE G1.Sniper 2 motherboard to our Facebook page. This was actually on display during Computex 2011 under the name ‘Z68 Gaming’. The G1.Sniper 2 will feature the latest Intel Z68 chipset supporting the high-performance Sandy Bridge processors.

That’s all we can really say for now. We’ll keep you informed regarding official launch dates etc.

Remember, you can view the complete GIGABYTE G1.Sniper 2 image collection on our Facebook page here. And don’t be afraid to give us a ‘Like’ if you feel inclined to do so.